The rationality of revolution

Leonard Dudley

Economics of Governance, 2000, vol. 1, issue 1, 77-103

Abstract: Between 950 and 1950, European states experienced four short intervals of rapid social, political and economic change. Each such period followed the introduction of a macroinvention in information and communication technology. Here these two sets of events are linked by a rational theory of revolution in which the optimal system for producing the information to allocate a society's resources depends on the relative importance of fixed costs and network effects. Variations in these parameters can trigger four types of revolution –contractual, consensual, preemptive and prescriptive– each of which captures the essential features of one of the historical periods of change. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2000

Keywords: Key words:Revolution; information; technology; Europe; game theory; JEL classification:N43; N44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Rationality of Revolution (1996)
Working Paper: The Rationality of Revolution (1996)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ecogov:v:1:y:2000:i:1:p:77-103

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10101/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Governance is currently edited by Amihai Glazer and Marko Koethenbuerger

More articles in Economics of Governance from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().